We booked a hotel for the night and headed down one Saturday in order to try one of their sailings titled “Steam to the Solent cruise and see the cruise ships depart.” The NCP car park serves us well when we travel to Southampton and it was a lovely day for a walk to the port. But check the distance if you’re thinking of doing the same thing because some people aren’t as agile and fit as us. Wait a minute. Most people are more agile and fit than us. Okay, well, still check the distance. It’s a bit of a walk and it’s not the most attractive of scenery on the way, although you will see some of the cruise ships you’re about to see from the water, only from land. Wow! What a treat!

Boarding was a painless affair. A quick check of the tickets we’d purchased, then up the gangway. There were lots of spaces to sit down on deck but quite a few already taken. However, we found the all-important beverage-dispensing location, purchased some fabulous beers, and found a shady spot to wait for the sail away.

Let’s quickly talk about one of Southampton port’s landmarks. It’s not something you’ll see from every cruise that departs Southampton, but if you’re lucky enough to be berthed at the western end of the port, or your ship is required to turn around in that area, or if you book a cruise on Shieldhall which happens to be near that area too, then you just might be treated to the sight of Southampton’s Great Big Pile of Rubbish.

What a sight that is. Nothing says Southampton quite like it. Rusting metal and discarded crap piled high. And interestingly, not too far from where all the now common-as-muck Tesla cars are stored just behind it. When you think of Tesla, do you think of a pile of crap? You probably do if you remember that Elon Musk is connected to it, and it’s hard not to combine all those elements in your mind when you’re at this part of Southampton.

Hey! I didn’t come here to read about your views on Billionaire Incel Boy! Get on with the write-up about Shieldhall, you!

Fine. I’m not going to cover much of the steamship here because there will be far better sources online for that. You want the history and power output and how much Shieldhall weighs, and things like that? My friend, you want Wikipedia’s entry on SS Shieldhall, not this rambling stream of consciousness around a load of photographs taken on a cruise down the Solent. What were you thinking, coming here like that? Here’s the place you visit on the internet to see pictures of cruise ships that happened to be in Southampton port on a Saturday in August, 2022, as seen from a steamship chugging past them on the water. Somebody, somewhere, somewhen in the future may need this information. That’s what I’m here for.

The first cruise ship we passed on Shieldhall was one of P&O‘s two Grand-class ships, Ventura. It’s no secret to our stalkers that we are immensely fond of the Grand-class design and general size, and we’ve cruised on Ventura a few times now. This website has a menu and from it there’s a Cruises section, and from that there’s a P&O Cruises sections, and from that there’s a Ventura section. And guess what!? From that you can see the cruises we’ve taken on Ventura. We like Ventura.

Shieldhall next passed a very different cruise ship. This was the Norwegian Cruise Line ship, Prima. We’ve never cruised with NCL before, and in fact, nobody had cruised on Prima before as we sailed past because she was just entering service with a shakedown trip. We’ve read that some people don’t like the artwork. We liked the artwork. We’ve read that some people don’t like that shape of the bow. We liked that too. We’ve read that some people didn’t like the idea of people sliding past their balconies. Now, admittedly, we wouldn’t want to be in those balconies because we like cruise ships for the sea views, not the tubes filled with wet, screaming kids and adults. But that’s just us. However, overall, we thought Prima looked really interesting. And then we checked the prices to cruise on her and thought yeah, no thanks.

The third of the four cruise ships docked in Southampton on that day came swiftly upon us. This was another P&O ship, but this was Iona. Oh dear. We’ve cruised on Iona. You can read about it here: Cruise: Iona Seacation. You know how much I said we liked Ventura up above? Well, turn that upside down and that’s our feelings about Iona. Not good. Not good for us, anyway. It was just the one cruise, and we’re not averse to giving ships or lines or ports or countries second chances, but they’ve got to be good deals with enough else to distract and impress in case the thing we’re offering a chance of redemption to fails to grab hold of the opportunity. That’s more-or-less my way of saying you’d almost have to pay us to cruise on Iona again. Almost. Not a fan of the design, and especially not the way the wrap-around promenade now stuffs up night viewing and sea views from lower balconies. Not happy to see all the Carnival ships going the same route either. Oh well. There’s a ship for everyone, and this particular design of ship is for the tasteless masses. If you’re part of the tasteless masses then you might enjoy Iona.

The final ship we cruised past as Shieldhall continued on her merry way down the sunny Solent was Princess Cruises‘ Sky Princess.

Princess Cruises is the line that suits us the best (for now). Our first cruise was with Princess, the most cruises we’ve taken have been with Princess, and they tread that line between being not the best for families and not the best for the elderly that works perfectly for us, the child-free, middle-aged couple you’re beginning to realise you can’t stand.

At the time of writing this (March 2023) we’ve also cruised on Sky Princess herself three times, although only the first cruise is currently written up and the second one is in progress. There are things we like about Sky Princess and things we don’t, and three cruises on the same ship in just over a year was, with the benefit of hindsight, too many. We felt a little bit done with her by the end, even though in each case it was a combination of destinations and value for money that had us booking cruises in the first place. Certainly, if you’ve not cruised before then Sky Princess would be a great first cruise ship to choose if you’re anything like us. But, fortunately, very few people are like us so, whatever you do, ask questions and seek way more details as well as explaining your own tastes and likes and age and family situation before doing something stupid like booking a cruise based off some recommendation online. The internet is full of terrible, terrible information.

For the remainder of this first part of the write-up about our cruise down the Solent on Steamship Shieldhall I’m going to let the photos do the talking. These are mostly of the views from the ship back to Southampton, across to the Isle of Wight, and even towards our home in Portsmouth in the distance, but a few snaps from when we took a look at the engine room area are included too. Yes, if you take a trip on a steamship like Shieldhall then you can go and take a look at the engines if you’re so inclined. They don’t let you do that on modern cruise ships, so something for the engineers out there. Again, you can find better pictures and videos of the ship herself elsewhere online; this is about the experience you can expect if you sail past the cruise ships instead.

In the concluding part of our Shieldhall cruise I’ll cover the return to Southampton, so you can expect many of the same photos but taken at a slightly later time of the day when I’d had many more beers aboard. That’s the sort of quality content you don’t find elsewhere on the web. You’ll also see a couple of the ships we’d already passed, now sailing out of the Solent themselves, and get to hear the battle of the noisy sea buggers as one ship’s horn takes on Shieldhall’s terrifying steam whistle.

So, brace yourself. This is mostly going to be photos containing even less information than accompanies the outward part of this Solent cruise. As I mentioned in that write-up, if you want facts and figures about the ship then there are plenty of better, more-detailed sources on the web, and you can always hit the Steamship Shieldhall website itself, especially since you’re going to be interested in booking a short trip on this historic vessel for yourself. Yes, you are.

The story so far…

We had boarded Shieldhall in Southampton and had sailed down the Solent passing a number of cruise ships berthed at the city’s docks.

And now the thrilling conclusion…

We headed back.

The first thing we saw was that Sky Princess had departed Southampton and was on her way out to sea. An announcement was made that Shieldhall would start sounding her steam whistle with the intention that Sky Princess would signal back, potentially using her Love Boat theme horn. Well, the intention was nice, the steam whistle was broadly terrifying, and Sky Princess roundly ignored us. Now, as it happened, I knew who was captaining Sky Princess since we’d cruised on Sky Princess a few times by this point, so I tweeted to Heikki Laakkonen, expressing my disappointment. He tweeted back almost immediately telling me that I should have told the captain of Shieldhall to speed up and get closer. Okay, so not great that this Princess Cruises ship didn’t sound her horn, but top marks to the captain replying quickly and explaining why. How can you not like that?

A little further along the stretch of water towards Southampton we spotted the P&O Cruises ship Ventura heading out. This time we were a lot closer and this time there was a proper back-and-forth battle of the ship’s horns and whistles that you can hear in the video below (temporarily removed). You’ll also get a good look at what it’s like to cruise past a medium-sized cruise ship from the water.

Both P&O’s Iona (and our views on Iona are well-known) and Norwegian’s Prima (pretty, but pricy!) were both still alongside as we brought our cruise on Steamship Shieldhall to a close.

After disembarking I found myself attracted to shots of razor wire and concrete. This doubtlessly confused some of the other steamship passengers, although if any of them had seen how many pints I’d had on board they might have concluded – wrongly – that I was simply drunk. I mean, I was tipsy, sure, but I do love the industrial look, and when it comes to ports, Southampton’s got its fair share of grit and grime and rust.

A couple of final points about the post-cruise period, one of which might be of actual use. I know! Helpful information in this post!? Surely not! Well, if you look on a map at the area where people park and you have to walk down to where Shieldhall is berthed in Southampton, you might spot a small bridge crossing over the train tracks and joining with Milbrook Point Road. And you might think to yourself “Well, this is handy, because after we get off the steamship we can head that way (since we’re not driving) and get to a pub in fairly short order, rather than traipsing all through the port area once again.” If you do think this to yourself then congratulations or my deepest sympathy for thinking in the same way as us. However, you can’t do this as we discovered. The bridge is (or at least, was) fenced off. You may want to factor that into your reckoning if you wisely choose to leave the car behind so you can spend some money at the bar on board.

The second point is related to the first, in that having discovered we couldn’t take the route we’d planned, we did the only remaining thing (well, other than call for a taxi, but we couldn’t be bothered) and started walking. We got as far as the roundabout between Western Avenue and West Bay Road before a car pulled up and one of the volunteers from the ship, recognising us as having been aboard, then gave us a lift to the dock gates. What a bloody star!

So that’s the cruise on Shieldhall to see the cruise ships in Southampton covered. Would we do it again? Hell, yes! In fact, almost certainly, and quite likely fairly frequently. If you get good weather then it’s great on deck, lovely views to be had, and just plain interesting. Even if you stay inside, you’ve got the engine room to see and food and drinks to be enjoyed. We had a great time on Shieldhall.

We therefore never considered a cruise to British ports until very recently but in May 2024 we headed down to Southampton and embarked Regal Princess for the start of twelve nights visiting Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and France. For me there would be no new countries to tick off the list but my wife had never been to Ireland before and she was keen to do so.

Embarkation was perfectly simple, the muster process was a breeze, it was nice to see new Princess Cruises tote bags in our room (we have quite the collection now), and the most important task of the first hour aboard was to head up onto the top deck and grab ourselves a 24K Margarita and a Dirty Banana. The staff are usually so busy delivering luggage or cleaning or dealing with confused passengers on embarkation day that it’s far easier to head to a bar rather than take advantage of the excellent room service through the Ocean Medallion system.

As Regal Princess left Southampton in the afternoon we saw a few very familiar sights. Hardly surprising given how often we do this.

First up was Steamship Shieldhall. We had a lovely time sailing on this 1950s vessel past all the cruise ships in port in Southampton back in 2022.

Further down the Solent and we got to admire the hovercraft on its Ryde to Portsmouth flight. That’s right, they’re called flights when you’re on a hovercraft. The ultimately useless, nineteenth century forts are also always a nice sight on these cruises out of our home county.

We don’t tend to do much on cruise ships – for us they’re for reading, listening to music, drinking, enjoying the sea views, and taking us in the most relaxing way possible to see sights around the world – so to conclude this first day aboard Regal Princess here are some photos of the food we had in the main dining room in case that’s of any interest, and some pictures of the Double Down Bar next to the casino, and the place where we’d end up most nights for the disco and cocktails. It was quiet there this first night but it did have its popular nights and with it being on the walking route from the theatre to the piazza – a stupid design decision – it did get briefly crowded whenever the shows finished and you’d have no chance getting a drink for about fifteen minutes.

The first full day on Regal Princess was a sea day, and one of only three on this cruise, and since it was so bright and sunny it was the perfect day to take a few photos around the upper decks after lunch. We had cruised on Regal Princess in 2021 just as we were coming out of the heaviest of the pandemic restrictions so photos of the ship had been taken before but that’s no reason not to take more.

Regal Princess is a Royal-class ship. Regal and her sister ship Royal Princess were the first two in this class and on this particular design their adults only pool has more exposed sides to the sea offering lovely views, little cabanas by the pool, and a far better pool design and depth than that of the later variants of the class. We ended up swimming in the pool and chatting with other cruisers for ages on this first sea day and my wife ended up sunburnt.

A perk of being Elite level with Princess Cruises, other than telling other people at every opportunity that you’re Elite level with Princess Cruises, is that you get a free wine-tasting on a sea day on cruises and that happened on this first day. These wine-tastings are pretty terrible but they’re entertainingly terrible if you’re sharing a table with other people who share your sense of humour and similar thoughts regarding what makes a wine nice and what causes you to screw up your face in horror, and that’s what happened.

We had noticed a few women aboard Regal Princess on embarkation day wearing red hats with other clothing in purple but hadn’t quite realised what the reasoning for this was nor quite how many of them were aboard until the afternoon on this sea day when, with it being formal night, a whole swathe of them (well over a hundred) suddenly swarmed the piazza where we were sitting down with a glass of decent wine now. They were all in 1920s themed clothing and had turned up for lots of group photos, and they looked fabulous. This was the Red Hat Society, as it turned out (not that unsurprisingly), and they’d prove to be entertaining both on the ship and off during this cruise.

Before the cruise we’d pre-booked some speciality dining and it was Sabatini’s, the Italian trattoria on the ship, that we dined at on this evening. We will almost always dine here at least once on any Princess cruise because the food is always fantastic and you never feel like you’re not getting value for money from the experience.

In the next post in this Regal Princess British Isles cruise travelogue series we’ll arrive at the first of two ports in Ireland, Cobh.